History of the Peloponnesian War

For as the Corinthians had their city on the Isthmus, from the very earliest times they maintained there a market for the exchange of goods, because the Hellenes within and without the Peloponnesus, in olden times communicating with one another more by land than by sea, had to pass through their territory; and so they were powerful and rich, as has been shown even by the early poets, who called the place “Wealthy Corinth”.[*](Hom. Il. 2.570; Pind. O. 13.4.) And when navigation grew more prevalent among the Hellenes, the Corinthians acquired ships and swept the sea of piracy, and offering a market by sea as well as by land, raised their city to great power by means of their revenues.

The Ionians, too, acquired a powerful navy later, in the time of Cyrus,[*](559-529 B.C.) the first king of the Persians, and of Cambyses his son; and waging war with Cyrus they maintained control of the sea about their own coasts for some time. Polycrates, also, who was tyrant of Samos in the time of Cambyses,[*](532-522 B.C.) was strong in sea-power and subdued a number of the islands, Rhenea among them, which he captured and consecrated to the Delian Apollo.[*](3.104) Finally the Phocaeans, when they were colonizing Massalia,[*](Marseilles, founded 600 B.C.) conquered the Carthaginians in a sea-fight.

These were the most powerful of the fleets; and even these, we learn, though they were formed many generations later than the Trojan war, were provided with only a few triremes, but were still fitted out with fifty-oared galleys and the ordinary long boats,[*](πλοῖα, usually contrasted with war-ships (τριήρεις), but here marked as ships of war by the epithet μακρά, though probably differing little except in size from trading-vessels.) like the navies of that earlier time.

Indeed, it was only a little before the Persian war and the death of Darius,[*](485 B.C.) who became king of the Persians after Cambyses, that triremes were acquired in large numbers, namely by the tyrants in various parts of Sicily and by the Corcyraeans; and these were the last navies worthy of note that were established in Hellas before the expedition of Xerxes.